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87–419 2003

FEDERAL ELECTION REFORM

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE 

ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MAY 10, 2001

Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

BOB NEY, Chairman 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

JOHN LINDER, Georgia 

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California 

THOMAS M. REYNOLDS, New York 

STENY H. HOYER, Maryland, 

Ranking Minority Member 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

JIM DAVIS, Florida 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

PAUL VINOVICH, Staff Director 

BILL CABLE, Minority Staff Director 

(1)

FEDERAL ELECTION REFORM 

THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2001

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 4:49 p.m., in Room 1310, 

Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Robert W. Ney (chairman 

of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Ney, Mica, Reynolds, Hoyer, and Davis. 

Staff present: Roman Buhler, Counsel; Paul Vinovich, Counsel; 

Jeff Janas, Professional Staff; Chet Kalis, Professional Staff; Luke 

Nichter, Staff Assistant; Sara Salupo, Staff Assistant; Bob Bean, 

Minority Staff Director; Keith Abouchar, Professional Staff; Matt 

Pinkus, Professional Staff; and Cynthia Patton, Professional Staff. 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. 

Today the Committee on House Administration is holding a hearing on election reform issues. I would also like to advise members 

of our audience here today that all cellular phones, pagers, and 

other electronic equipment must be silenced to prevent interruption 

at the hearing. Thank you in advance for that. 

Also, today’s hearing is being broadcast on the Internet. It is 

available on the committee’s Web site at www.house.gov/cha. Accordingly, the hearing will also be available on the Web site. We 

want to welcome you to visit the site and tune into the proceedings. 

I have a brief opening statement. We have witnesses who have 

traveled a long way, so I promise I will be brief. It is a pleasure 

to be here today with the members of the committee. 

I want to welcome you to the second in a series of election reform 

hearings held by the Committee on House Administration. At this 

hearing, the committee will hear testimony from working election 

officials, those who actually administer the election process. 

At the committee’s first hearing on April 25, we heard from secretaries of state and representatives of national groups interested 

in election reform. 

Next week, the committee will hold an exposition and a hearing 

in this room featuring vendors of voting equipment, their technology, and their views on the election reform process. 

I want to mention these things just to show a brief history, since 

we were officially given the task of having the hearings on this, 

and I want to stress that—and a release is being passed out as we 

speak, a joint release by our distinguished member, Mr. Hoyer, the 

Ranking Member from Maryland, announcing an agreement in substance to proceed on a piece of legislation together on a bipartisan 

2

basis, welcoming all members from both sides of the aisle, and it 

outlines a few items in principle that we are looking at. 

That does not mean that we have written a bill up. We have 

ideas, and you are here today, and we want to hear from you. But 

I believe and know that by announcing this today, we are showing 

that we are completely serious about this. 

This committee also produced—I think I am correct, the first bipartisan House funding measure in 25-some years, as I understand 

it, in a bipartisan manner that funds the institution of the House. 

I believe that we can produce a bill that Members on both sides 

of the aisle will like, and in that make sure that the votes are 

counted. 

As we come up to the 21st century, we stress local control. That 

is why we appreciate your input. 

I just want thank Mr. Hoyer and the members of this committee, 

especially Mr. Hoyer, for working together. People have said, well, 

you know, the issue really is not being talked about every day. I 

believe that the average American expects and demands and knows 

in their heart that we are going to do something beyond technology. There are also training issues, disenfranchisement issues, 

military voting, all those issues that are out there. 

I just want to let you know that this announcement, in my opinion, is a major step and shows that we are heading in the direction 

of producing election reform very soon. 

With that, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland. 

Mr. HOYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a statement, but 

I want to make a comment on your announcement. 

The tone of this committee is what I think President Bush had 

in mind when he said he would be changing the tone. It is a tone 

that is set by Chairman Ney. It is a positive tone that we want to 

do something together. 

There will be things on which we disagree, but on those matters 

that we can agree, Chairman Ney has made it very clear that he 

wants to move those matters forward so that we can make progress 

and not simply yell and scream and posture with one another. 

Our witnesses—I think this is probably your first hearing this 

year at the House Administration Committee, but I am sure some 

of the members of the press and others, maybe the staff, get tired 

of hearing Ney and Hoyer say that the other guy is a good guy and 

doing good things. Somebody shook their heads in the back of the 

room, yes, we are tired of hearing that. 

But I think it bears repeating, because I think the citizens ought 

to know that there is an opportunity and there is the reality of 

positive cooperation on moving towards something that is important for America. I think this is one of them. 

This is the second hearing that the House Administration Committee has held on electoral reform in as many weeks. In a real 

sense, today’s hearing is a tutorial for this committee on the nuts 

and bolts of election administration taught by the people who know 

the subject best, State and local election officials who do it for it 

a living, who are the professionals, who are the most knowledgeable people in this Nation on this issue. 

3

Today’s hearing thus continues the learning process we began on 

April 25, during which we learned what State secretaries, county 

officials, and State legislators are doing right now. 

John Herson, as you recall, Mr. Chairman, said there were over 

1,500 bills introduced around the country. This is an issue that is 

receiving extraordinarily high attention at the State level. 

We have in this committee some 45 or 50 bills, and maybe more 

now, dealing with either campaign finance reform or election reform, or both, so there is a high level of interest in this committee. 

All of us on the committee listened last week and asked hard 

questions, and we learned. We learned, for example, that Federal 

assistance is welcomed by Republicans, by Democrats, by State 

Legislatures, by secretaries of state; by essentially everyone who 

testified. 

We learned that States and counties want to partner with the 

Federal Government to develop voluntary election codes. I stress 

‘‘voluntary.’’ That was clearly the theme throughout. 

Historically, States and local subdivisions have run our elections, 

but, just as well, they have run Federal elections during that process without any compensation from the Federal Government. As 

you know, the Constitution gives to the Congress, and we have the 

jurisdiction over elections of Federal officials, so we need to work 

in partnership. 

We learned that the cost of running elections is both very expensive and a low-budget priority, unfortunately, for most State and 

county governments. That may have changed slightly, but it has 

been a reality. 

All of us on the committee will continue to learn. Next week we 

will host a demonstration, as the Chairman has said, of the latest 

voting technology, and learn what voting machine experts have to 

say. I would hope future hearings will explore such key issues as 

provisional ballots, registration practices, and military and overseas voting, clearly very important issues for us to deal with. 

Make no mistake, Chairman Ney and I will use this knowledge 

to craft, as he has just said, a bipartisan electoral reform measure 

that recognizes the legitimate role Congress can play in modernizing our democracy’s infrastructure without infringing on the 

rights of States and local communities. 

Clearly, momentum for genuine electoral reform in my opinion is 

picking up. There has been broad cynicism frankly, in this town, 

that nothing would happen on this issue. I have told people that 

I am optimistic, largely because of the positive leadership displayed 

by our Chairman. 

I want to say also that Roy Blunt, with whom the Chairman and 

I have both talked and Speaker Hastert asked to head up an effort, 

has also been very positive. I expect him to work with us as well. 

Since House Administration held its first hearing, the Senate 

Governmental Affairs Committee has held two hearings on this 

issue. Just this week, Senator McCain’s Committee on Commerce 

held its first hearing on this. The emerging lesson is that electoral 

reform, for all its complexity, is not on the back burner. There is 

a growing consensus that immediate steps must be taken to update 

voting equipment, improve poll worker and voter education, and 

4

develop voluntary codes and best practices for election administration. 

I am happy to say that all of these immediate steps can be taken 

by House Administration under Chairman Ney’s leadership. I am 

confident they will be. Right now it is the States that are leading 

the way. It is time for Congress to step up and help them, in partnership, complete this task. 

Just yesterday, Governor Jeb Bush signed into law Florida’s justpassed election reform bill. I am going to leave any further discussion on that to my colleague, Jim Davis. But it is a very significant 

step, and it comes as other States are seriously engaged in electoral reform, such as Georgia, and as my own chief election official 

from the State of Maryland, Linda Lamone, former Assistant Attorney General of our State, will I am sure set forth. 

Among other strengths, Florida’s new law will eliminate punch 

cards and many other things. Again, I am going to leave that to 

Jim Davis to discuss. 

That is short-term, in some respects, electoral reform. We also 

need long-term electoral reform. The Florida vote, Mr. Chairman, 

as you saw, was extraordinarily bipartisan. There were only two 

votes against it in the entire legislature; none in the Senate, and 

only two in the House. That is an extraordinary accomplishment 

and an important one. It is powerful testimony that when government’s executive and legislative branches put politics and institutional prerogative aside, they can do great things for the people 

they serve. 

This House, as well as the U.S. Senate, can take inspiration from 

that accomplishment. I would hope, Mr. Chairman, that the White 

House, as Senator McCain asked and observed the other day, the 

White House would respond to our request and Senator McCain’s 

request to set forth their principles on where they think we ought 

to go. 

Mr. Chairman, I had the opportunity of questioning Mitch Daniels, the director of OMB, this morning as we heard his budget. He 

indicated that the President thought this was an important issue, 

one that needed to be addressed. He would look forward to talking 

with us about resources to accomplish this objective. So I thought 

that was very positive. 

Again, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your leadership 

on this issue, and thank our witnesses for taking the time to be 

with us so late in the day. 

I want to thank the members of the press who are here. It is now 

5 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. Most Members have left town. 

I want to thank them for being here, because obviously to the extent the people know what we are doing, they can then communicate their desires and energy and their expectations to the Members. 

This is something we must do. I have referred to it as the civil 

rights issue of the 107th Congress. I believe that. There is no more 

fundamental right in a democracy than the right to have one’s 

voice heard in the decision-making process of our Nation, of our 

States, and our local governments. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

5

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. We have been joined by three distinguished members, Mr. Reynolds of New York, Mr. Mica of Florida, 

and Mr. Davis of Florida. 

We appreciate your participation. 

Any comments? 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Davis. 

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, I will be brief. The witnesses are 

ready to testify. 

I just want to briefly mention the Florida situation for Mr. Reynolds and, I am sure, John Mica as well. Welcome, Pam Iorio, my 

supervisor of elections from Tampa and president of the State association, as well as our other distinguished witnesses. 

The Florida legislature indeed did pass a bill which Governor Jeb 

Bush has expressed his intention to sign that has as its top priority 

replacing the punch card machines. I think it is fair to say there 

was an enormous temptation, I believe on both sides, to play politics with this issue. We all understand how that temptation, when 

it comes to election reform, comes up. 

But the legislature came through and adopted a bill, and Pam 

Iorio will talk more about the bill today and how we can help. I 

think one of the reasons it happened is that Floridians did exactly 

what the Chairman just said. There was some polling done, some 

conversations took place, and there was a high percentage of Floridians that said to the legislature, you had better fix this or else, 

and they came through. 

I share your view, Mr. Chairman, that the rest of the country expects us to step into the breach as well. I am very encouraged 

about the news from you, Mr. Hoyer, about getting ready to work 

on something. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Other comments? Mr. Mica? 

Mr. MICA. Well, I don’t know if I am pleased if the Florida legislature has acted in such rapid fashion. I think a lot has been made 

about some of our problems in Florida, and I think we have heard 

that the solution, at least in the preliminary hearings that we have 

heard here, the solution is very expensive. We had one state secretary testify it was, I think, $130 million. We spent $30 million, I believe, in our effort this week. I think 

some of this is expensive window dressing. 

What is funny is that they replaced it with—we are going to get 

rid of the punch cards which have been some of the problem. Other 

jurisdictions still have this. But what they are replacing it with—

I sat and watched for days the recounting and the counts—they are 

replacing it with some of that other equipment. And I saw countless ballots so simple to fill out, all you had to do was take a pen 

and complete one line like this, and I saw hundreds of ballots 

where people circled them, x’d them, drew lines across them. I would not take too much consolation in spending $30 million 

to get rid of part of the problem. 

This is not the civil rights issue of our era. I think we have long 

passed an era when anyone is denied a vote, at least in Florida, 

that I have seen. I would strongly support enforcement on Election 

Day to make certain that remains in place, but I don’t think that 

was the case, and it should not be portrayed in that fashion. 

6

Even if it passed by two votes, I still think it was, it does not 

educate the elector, which is so important. As I said, Thomas Jefferson—at our last hearing—he said it was the cornerstone of democracy. So we will still continue to have problems. But if it makes 

people feel good, I want to feel good, too, and I am pleased that everybody else is feeling good today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Mica. 

Mr. Reynolds. 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Chairman, I think both you and our Ranking 

Member, Mr. Hoyer, have set the tone and the tenor and goals of 

the House Administration Committee. 

While I am new on this committee, I am an up-through-theranks legislator that has watched town, county, and State address 

election issues and fairness of elections in New York. 

I very much look forward to the testimony today to talk about 

what I call the front-line practitioners of fair elections. 

We have had the opportunity of hearing how the State wades 

through those, from the secretaries of state and other forms of election officials. We have the opportunity today to listen to this committee hearing on our front line, and that might help us find 

awareness of how practices differ in other parts of the country, 

both good and bad, things I may be an expert on in New York. 

I think this will be a very important opportunity for us to listen 

to the front-line message, where the Federal Government might become more aware of what we should be doing in the investment of 

solid elections across the country. 

I thank both of you for setting the tenor and goals of what this 

committee needs to do. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

With that, we will introduce the panel. 

We have Doug Lewis, Director of the Elections Center; Conny 

McCormack, Los Angeles County Registrar Recorder, County Clerk; 

Connie Schmidt, Elections Commissioner, Johnson County, Kansas; 

Carolyn Jackson, Administration of Elections, Hamilton County, 

Tennessee; Pam Iorio, Supervisor of Elections, Hillsborough County, Florida, President of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections. 

We also have Linda Lamone, Administrator, Maryland State 

Board of Elections. 

I want to thank all of the witnesses for coming here to the Capitol. 

STATEMENTS OF DOUG LEWIS, DIRECTOR, THE ELECTION 

CENTER, HOUSTON, TEXAS; PAM IORIO, SUPERVISOR OF 

ELECTIONS, HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FLORIDA; CONNIE 

SCHMIDT, ELECTION COMMISSIONER, JOHNSON COUNTY, 

KANSAS; CAROLYN JACKSON, ADMINISTRATOR OF ELECTIONS, HAMILTON COUNTY ELECTION COMMISSION, CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE; CONNY McCORMACK, REGISTRARRECORDER/COUNTY CLERK, LOS ANGELES COUNTY; AND 

LINDA LAMONE, ADMINISTRATOR, MARYLAND STATE 

BOARD OF ELECTIONS

The CHAIRMAN. I will start with Mr. Lewis. 

7

STATEMENT OF R. DOUG LEWIS 

Mr. LEWIS. Congressman, thank you. 

Actually, quite frankly, I am extraordinarily pleased to hear the 

tenor and the tone and the commitment that seems to be yours in 

terms of trying to find the right solutions here. 

Election 2000 was not really a crucifixion of Florida, because it 

was an indication of what we have known are systemic problems 

throughout elections in America for quite some time. There was 

also some new information that we learned. 

Certainly learning that voting systems allowed more voter errors 

in some cases than others because new information to us, and particularly in terms of the depth of that information. So we are going 

to have to learn to do some things to make sure that does not happen again. 

Certainly, even though we have been inclined to know that inexperienced voters apparently did not know how to vote, we did not 

really know the depth of that until we saw this election, so we are 

learning something there in terms of what we are going to have to 

concentrate on. 

I am going to direct my comments, because more often than not 

I keep getting asked, what is it that we can do—meaning you, the 

Congress—what is it that is necessary to be done at a Federal level 

in terms of elections in America, and how do we do that? 

The Election Center has a National Task Force on Elections Reform that had 37 State and local election administrators on it, and 

will be presenting its information sometime next month, that covers basically 30 subject matter areas with 80 specific recommendations. 

I am not going to try to prerelease that today, because it is more 

detailed than you are going to be able to withstand today or and 

have interest in, and we have other folks that need to be heard, 

too. 

Let me say, though, that there are some areas in which all of us, 

I think, in this elections community welcome your input and your 

support and your Federal dollars. 

Certainly when it comes to voting equipment, I am not going to 

defend the punch cards any longer. I have done that because part 

of what they were attacked about was incorrect. 

Let me try to make some statements. So you all know, voting 

systems do not count votes inaccurately. That is a myth that developed in this election and that the news media did not get straight 

until almost recently. 

Voters make more errors on certain types of voting systems, but 

voting systems are tested to make sure that they have an accuracy 

of counting votes to 1 vote within 1 million votes; so that you understand, there is a distinct difference here. 

Having said that, you know, it is not enough for us to then just 

say that we can ignore voter error, because we cannot. But the 

truth is, we have not tracked any of the data that is related to 

that, either at the local level or at the State level or at the Federal 

level. 

Without having that kind of data in terms of how many overvotes are cast, how many undervotes are cast, and to then establish 

a benchmark norm, and for us to know what is it then that deviVerDate jul 14 2003 02:27 Aug 28, 2003 Jkt 087419 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B419.XXX B419
8

ates from the norm so we can bring information to you and say, 

folks, we obviously recognize we have a problem and we are going 

to go after it and fix these problems, so we are going to have to 

start tracking that. 

In terms of database, the disconnects between voters and the voting systems showed us—the voter registration systems thought 

they registered at DMV or Social Services or wherever, and that information did not get translated and sent to the elections community, we have to fix that problem. We know we have to fix that 

problem. 

But that is not an easy solution, because actually the NVRA sets 

up nobody in charge. It gives us new agencies to handle this and 

makes them responsible for having voter registration, but then 

does not make them accountable to an election official anywhere for 

whether they deliver that data appropriately or not. 

So whether we ever get charged with that or with the responsibility for that, we are going to find a way to make sure that disconnection does not happen in the future. 

Certainly the most important part of all of this, let me say to 

you, voting systems today are better than they were 7 years ago 

because of the Federal voting system standards. Voting systems 

are better today than they were 3 years ago because of the Federal 

voting systems standards. 

We need your involvement and your commitment to put that in 

law and to give that to the OEA as its responsibility with earmarked funds. You see in my testimony where I have kind of estimated what that will cost you. 

We need the operational practice standards as the component 

part of that, so that we know what to do in terms of specific types 

of voting systems; what is good practice, what is not good practice; 

what is it you must do every time, what is it you should do, and 

what becomes good practice. We need that. 

We know that those standards are probably going to take us—

if we threw a lot of money and talent at it, we could maybe do it 

in 2, 21⁄2 years; but more likely it will take us 4 years to actually 

develop those to where they become good standards. You see kind 

of what I estimate that would cost to do that. 

Voting systems research is what I just talked about. We need to 

gather data. In fact, the Federal Election Commissioner of the Office of Election Administration—I don’t care if it is housed with 

FEC, as long as it is with the OEA, but certainly they need to be 

the ones who know what voting systems are in America. 

We actually gave a Federal grant to them, to a private company, 

to do that. The private company then took the data, and it sells the 

data to this day, because we cannot keep that because we do not 

have staff or funds assigned to that project. Certainly we need that. 

So it is not just over- and under-votes that we track, but it is 

also when problems occur with those systems, so we know what 

those problems are and can tell others in the country, and so we 

can also not have to rely on the vendors when one of these people 

wants to buy a system; that they know who else in the country has 

that system, so they can find out what the foibles and flaws and 

support levels and so on are with it. 

9

We certainly need a new elections class of mail. NVRA said we 

were going to get first-class mail service at third-class rates, which 

the Postal Service said, ‘‘No, that is not exactly what it said. Congress knew that it did not exactly word it correctly, and therefore 

we are not going to give that to you.’’

Not only that, then it sets up so many restrictions that most of 

our people, it turns out, after really trying to apply it, cannot use 

it. 

We are saying to you, we need a new level of first-class mail 

called ‘‘elections mail’’ that then gives us 50 percent of whatever 

the current first-class rates are. Then there are a whole lot more 

complicated things that I won’t go into here. 

But in order to make sure that the Postal Service understands 

that we are going to follow that all the way through, we have a 

whole series of recommendations on that. That is probably going to 

cost us in the order of $100 million a year in order to fund that, 

because the Postal Service does not want to subsidize it, obviously, 

out of their budget. We would not expect them to. 

But at the same time, it will help us then with all those NVRA 

mandated mailings to actually be able to pay for them; and not 

only with those, but then in terms of voter education programs, of 

sample ballots, voter pamphlets, voter information of where the 

polling place is, or even how to vote, sending out instructional materials on how to vote and how to use a voting system. It is important that we have this kind of subsidy. 

I will not then go into all the State issues, but let me wrap up 

with some things that we think need to be done. 

Obviously, the States are going to have to define what constitutes a vote. Voter intent is not a standard, and it became 

hugely clear that in Florida, the absence of knowing what constituted a vote before they started the counting process is what 

screwed up the process. 

It was not that these folks are—particularly Pam and those Florida folks, not that they were not going to try, but Pam had her definition of it, and Jane Carol had her definition of it, and Teresa 

Lapore had her definition of it, and when the lawyers descended 

upon them, none of them liked any of those definitions, so they all 

kept trying to make up their own definition of what constituted the 

vote. 

I don’t blame the campaigns for that. That is what they have to 

do in that situation. 

In terms of uniform poll closing hours, please do not do that to 

us. It does not solve a problem. It is a solution with no problem. 

The truth is that the networks, the news networks, take and use 

manufactured news. They get out there and they take that, based 

on the sampling of people who have voted, and then report that as 

if that were actual votes. 

It is the networks that ought not to be let off the hook here, but 

they are the ones who are behind the Uniform Poll Closing Act, so 

we can have a very complicated act to try to follow that really still 

does not solve the problem. So do not give us that, please. 

Certainly weekend, 3-day holiday voting, we are willing to buy 

into holiday voting if you all want to attempt it. Most of us think 

10

it is going to end up meaning a 4-day weekend, and that we will 

have more trouble getting poll workers, rather than less. 

But if you all want to try that and want to try a national holiday 

on that, at least it frees up polling places for us so that we have 

those. Maybe it will free up some additional Election Day workers, 

particularly if we can pick up Federal Government, State government, and local government employees and roll them in as poll 

workers, and maybe we can improve the situation with poll workers. 

I could go on. Internet voting is the other one. I am surprised 

how often we continue to hear very responsible people who continue to say, oh, yes, we ought to have Internet voting. I even listened to Donna Brazil on C–Span the other day talking about how 

we ought to have Internet voting. 

Folks, look, we have had the best technological mind in America 

say it is not safe and secure and cannot be used as a technology 

yet. Despite the fact that Bell Telephone—I remember 30 years ago 

when Bell Labs went out there and told all of us that we were 

going to be voting on the new invention they had, a touch tone telephone. And 30 years later, we are not doing it. 

We may be able to make Internet voting yet, and hopefully most 

of us want to be able to make it work, but only if we can do it safely and securely. That is my testimony. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

We will move on to Pam Iorio. 

STATEMENT OF PAM IORIO 

Ms. IORIO. Thank you, Chairman Ney, and Members of Congress. 

I appreciate this opportunity to address the House Administration 

Committee. 

My name is Pam Iorio. I am serving my third term as the supervisor of elections in Hillsborough County, Florida. I am also the 

president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections. 

The closeness of the Presidential election of 2000 highlighted the 

frailties of many aspects of our election system. In Florida, our 

election infrastructure was revealed as a hodge-podge of voting systems, ranging from the paper ballot to lever machines to punch 

cards to optical scan. 

The voting system used by almost every major urban county in 

the State was based on 1970s technology, and that led to a large 

number of errors made by voters on Election Day that effectively 

negated thousands of votes. 

During the past Presidential election in Florida, a race won by 

537 votes, there were 105,000 votes for President that were discarded because the voter voted for more than one candidate for 

President. This is called overvoting. 

The number of overvotes varied dramatically according to the 

voting system used by each county. The number was higher in 

punch card and central count optical scan counties, and lower in 

precinct-based optical scan counties. 

Some analysts look at the combined over- and undervote when 

judging the performance of voting systems. An undervote is when 

a voter skips a race altogether. This is usually a conscious decision 

11

on the part of the voter, but can be attributed to ballot design or 

unfamiliarity with a particular type of technology. 

In the Florida 2000 Presidential election, the combined underand overvote differed among voting systems. Punch card counties 

had a 3.93 percent rate; central count optical scan had a 5.68 percent rate; the one county that utilized the paper ballot had a 6.32 

percent rate; and the lowest rate was the precinct-based optical 

scan at .83 percent. 

Thus, we can see that the type of voting system used had an effect on the number of votes that were counted for President in each 

county. 

Now, last week the Florida legislature passed the most sweeping 

election reform in Florida history. The focus of that reform was on 

change in voting technology. 

The new law decertifies the use of punch card systems and any 

other voting system that is not precinct-based. The law specifically 

states that a county must use an electronic or electromechanical 

precinct count tabulation voting system; and further, that the voting system at the precinct must be set up to reject a ballot and provide the elector an opportunity to correct the ballot where the elector has overvoted a race. 

Many States are debating whether they too should discard their 

punch cards and other older technologies. The lesson from the November election is that election technology and investment in that 

technology must at least keep pace with the technological advances 

in other aspects of our lives. 

When it comes to the administration of elections, the Nation 

should utilize the very best technology. We must not stand still, 

and we must move forward and bring about positive change. 

Many counties across the Nation cannot change technologies because of the expense. The Florida legislature recognized this in 

their Election Reform Act by allocating grants to counties to help 

pay for the transition to new technology. Counties with populations 

of less than 75,000 will receive $7,500 per precinct, and larger 

counties will receive $3,750 per precinct.

This is an appropriate distribution of funds, since many small 

counties in Florida have a very limited tax base and cannot possibly afford funds for new equipment. However, many of the larger 

urban counties across the Nation will be looking at a paperless direct recording system, and those systems cost sometimes four times 

as much as precinct-based optical scan. 

For example, in my county, we can move to precinct-based optical 

scan for $3 million, but a move to touch screen would cost at least 

$12 million. 

Large urban counties in Florida such as Hillsborough, Broward, 

Orange, Duvall, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach have large infrastructure needs. It is difficult for local governments to allocate 

funds for expensive direct recording systems. 

Yet a paperless balloting system makes since for large urban centers. We have here today the election official from Los Angeles 

County, 4.1 million voters, and the requirement to produce a ballot 

in seven different languages; a supervisor in Miami-Dade, 1 million 

voters and ballots in three different languages. Printing paper balVerDate jul 14 2003 02:27 Aug 28, 2003 Jkt 087419 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B419.XXX B419
12

lots for these large jurisdictions is cumbersome, inefficient, and 

very expensive. 

So what is the role of the Federal Government in helping counties move to new technology? Perhaps we should first ask what has 

been the historic role of the Federal Government in the elections 

process. 

We know that the Federal Government involves itself in the election process to ensure fairness to all citizens, to level the playing 

field for all voters. 

The 1965 Voting Rights Act, for example, told States they could 

not enact a poll tax or literacy test as a prerequisite for voting. 

There the Federal Government recognized an inequity: that some 

voters were being treated differently than others. 

The passage of the National Voter Registration Act in 1993 was 

another milestone piece of legislation. It mandated a uniform method of registration across the country so citizens everywhere would 

have equal access to the registration process. 

Today the issue is one of difference in technology that creates an 

unequal playing field for voters. A voter in Florida in 2002 will 

have an opportunity to correct an error before his or her vote is actually counted. A voter in Illinois, still using the punch card system, will not be afforded that same opportunity. 

A county with a strong tax base will be able to afford the very 

best technology that eliminates the overvote. A county with a poor 

tax base is stuck with technology of the 1970s. 

Is this fair to the voters of our country? Does not the Federal 

Government have a role to play to ensure that all citizens of this 

Nation, regardless of the economic circumstances of their particular 

county, have the right to the best voting technology? 

The Voting Improvement Act that is before your committee today 

represents the involvement of the Federal Government in ensuring 

that all voters across this Nation have access to better, more advanced election technology. 

The threshold for election technology in all 3,155 counties across 

this Nation should be precinct-based systems that can alert the 

voter that he or she has made an error, and gives the voter an opportunity to correct the error. 

The current figure in the bill of $6,000 per precinct is a good 

start, but again large urban counties will need a greater funding 

level to help them move to the more advanced direct voting devices. 

I believe that ultimately the Presidential election of 2000 will be 

about how we as a National responded to the problems and challenges we faced. Florida has responded well to the challenges of 

November. We identified the problems, crafted and passed legislation, and formed a funding partnership between State and local 

governments. We have striven for a model election system. 

The question today is how will the Federal Government respond 

to the problems of the past election? Will the Federal Government 

play a role in bringing technological equity to all voters? 

The problems revealed through this election process gives us an 

opportunity to do what Americans do best: bring about positive 

change. Through the work of Federal, State, and local governments, it can be the lasting legacy of this past election. 

13

Thank you very much for this opportunity to address your committee today. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for your testimony.

Next will be Connie Schmidt. 

STATEMENT OF CONNIE SCHMIDT 

Ms. SCHMIDT. Chairman Ney, distinguished members of the 

Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to 

discuss election reform issues. 

My name is Connie Schmidt, and I serve as the election commissioner of Johnson County, Kansas. We are located in the greater 

Kansas City metropolitan area. 

Our county has a history of growth in population and leadership 

in voting systems. In 1987 we were one of the first in the country 

to purchase direct record electronic voting equipment. Today, population growth, advances in voting technology, and changes in our 

State laws affecting elections have brought our county to another 

decision on the purchase of touch screen voting computers. 

Our county, like others throughout the country, is not immune 

to voting disasters. The high voter turnout of the 1992 Presidential 

election created very long lines at polling places throughout the 

country. Johnson County also experienced a 27 percent increase in 

voter registration in the 3-month period prior to that election. That 

translated to extremely long lines at our polls in November, 1992 

with a record 89 percent voter turnout. Many of our voters waited 

in line for 3 or more hours to cast their votes. 

The Secretary of State’s Office in Kansas and the State legislature recognized the importance of making voting convenient and 

accessible, and in 1995 they approved an early advanced voting law 

which actually provides for ‘‘no-excuse’’ voting, in person or by 

mail. 

Advanced voting is extremely popular in Johnson County. In the 

1996 and again in the 2000 Presidential election, our advanced 

votes represented over 35 percent of the total votes cast in our 

county. We had minimal lines at the precinct voting locations on 

Election Day, and most importantly to us, the voters were pleased 

that they had an option of casting their ballots at their convenience. 

Kansas law also provides for provisional ballots to be cast by voters. No voter is turned away on Election Day. Every provisional 

ballot is researched individually between Election Day and the canvass of the election, with a recommendation to count or not count 

based on State law. 

As a member of the Election Center’s Election Reform Task 

Force, I have had the privilege of participating with my colleagues 

in an honest evaluation of the election process, including exactly 

how well we do our jobs. 

I must tell you that election administrators are the most dedicated and committed group of individuals you will ever meet. We 

are perfectionists and control freaks, and we are proud of it. We 

are the gatekeepers of democracy, and we are committed to excellence, the highest level of integrity, and, most importantly, to open 

and impartial elections. 

14

We take great pride in the public’s confidence and trust in our 

ability to do our jobs, and we are deeply saddened that the aftermath of the November 2000 election has eroded some of that trust. 

We can rebuild voter confidence, and we believe that it has to start 

at the grassroots level. 

To local government, elections are an unfunded mandate. This 

means that election administrators are always vying for funding 

against libraries, roads and bridges, Meals on Wheels, and park 

and recreation activities, all items that impact residents on a daily 

basis. 

Elections are at the bottom of the funding list because they are 

perceived as only a once- or twice-a year activity. Any effort to replace aging voting equipment is a very, very hard sell. To say that 

we all need additional dollars is a given, but to say that we all 

need the same type of voting equipment is not. 

For example, Kansas has 21 counties that vote on hand-counted 

paper ballots, and it works; 81 counties vote on optical scan paper 

ballots; and 3 large counties cast their ballots on electronic voting 

machines. 

This diversity in Kansas exists throughout the entire country. 

What works for one county does not necessarily work for all. The 

reality is that there are flaws in the system, and the media magnified them during the November 2000 election. 

If we as election administrators could live in a perfect world, the 

voter registration records would be accurate, complete, and always 

up to date. But the reality is that the voter files are inflated due 

to mandatory compliance with the NVRA. 

In a perfect world, there would be an abundance of accessible 

voting locations, but the reality is that it is difficult to find those 

locations, and often not possible to find accessible ones. 

In the perfect world, elections would be easy to program and the 

voting equipment would always work, but the reality is that elections are complicated and machines break down. 

In the perfect world, there would always be an abundant pool of 

trained election workers to choose from for every Election Day, but 

the reality is that approximately 98 percent of our election workers 

are senior citizens, and the pool is not being replenished. 

In the perfect world, budget dollars would be available to educate 

the voters, purchase new voting equipment, and increase election 

workers’ salaries, but again, the reality is that elections are an unfunded mandate. 

In the perfect world, the voters would research candidates and 

issues prior to Election Day, and everyone would celebrate democracy by casting their vote. But as we all know, the reality is that 

voter participation is declining, particularly among 18- and 24-

year-olds. 

In the perfect world, election administrators would have access 

to an election resource library of best practices, but the reality is 

that that does not exist, and it will require Federal funding. 

In the perfect world, election administrators would receive mandatory federally funded training on Federal and State election procedures, but the reality is that while the Election Center has an 

excellent certification program, many election administrators cannot afford to attend. 

15

In the perfect world, there would be uniform, voluntary voting 

system standards and operating procedures maintained by election 

administrators at the State and local level. But the reality is the 

Office of Election Administration of the FEC is seriously underfunded. Voting system standards are not up to date, operational 

standards do not exist, and there is no clearinghouse for reporting 

problems with voting systems. 

In the perfect world, there would be clear rules to determine 

voter intent within each State. But the reality is that voter intent 

standards do not exist in all States. 

With Federal funding, it is possible to address many of these 

issues. We must join together collectively, at the local, State, and 

Federal level to share resources and to find creative and innovative 

solutions. 

In our county, we have implemented several election worker recruitment programs involving civic organizations, corporate business owners, and 16- and 17-year-old high school students. 

Since 1998, we have recruited a total of 506 election workers 

through those programs. In late 1999, again in response to a lack 

of funding for voter outreach activities, our office recruited citizen 

leaders, including high school students and college students, to create a nonpartisan, nonprofit Promote the Vote Foundation. 

In election 2000, over 13,000 students participated in programs 

sponsored by that Foundation. Many similar programs are ongoing 

in other communities, and they are all focused on increasing voter 

eduction and participation. 

So we are asking for Federal funding for voting equipment and 

centralized voter registration software for election administrator 

certification training programs and for sufficient funding of the Office of Election Administration to develop and maintain those uniform voluntary voting system standards. 

As election administrators we believe that nurturing and protecting democracy is a team effort, a community-wide, statewide, 

and nationwide team effort. We ask that you join with us as we 

work to improve the administration of elections in America and to 

rebuild voter confidence. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you for testifying.

Next, Carolyn Jackson. 

STATEMENT OF CAROLYN JACKSON 

Ms. JACKSON. Chairman Ney and other members of the Committee, it is an honor to be asked to appear before you to present 

my views from the local level of election administration. 

I have been an election official since 1982. I will attempt in the 

time allotted to present to you a brief analysis of the problems and 

needs on the local level. 

It is a dreadful feeling to know that you are expected to produce 

flawless elections with equipment that is antiquated and no longer 

serviceable. A better understanding of the requirements and needs 

from election officials would enhance the final product. 

The publicity from the November election has caused a level of 

interest from all walks of life, which can be beneficial in that the 

16

attention received has resulted in a long overdue dialogue among 

all levels of government and voters of our great country. 

It is my hope this dialogue will produce a final product that will 

ensure quality equipment and a means of communication to the 

voters we serve. The voters deserve and expect education and the 

assurance their vote is counted on Election Day, whether it be 

early, absentee, or on the regular Election Day. 

Voters should accept the responsibility of maintaining an accurate and up-to-date voter registration and change of address. This 

process can be stressed through voter education, which may require 

additional funding from sources that normally do not understand 

the importance of voter education nor the process itself. 

There are mandates from the Federal and State levels that have 

caused additional financial burdens on the election commissions 

that are already underfunded, such as the postage rates we must 

endure in implementing the NVRA. 

Hopefully, out of this current crisis you will take time to pursue 

the concerns surrounding the NVRA. Again, it has been an honor 

to be among the local officials given the opportunity to present 

some of our concerns. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for your testimony. 

Next, Conny McCormack. 

STATEMENT OF CONNY McCORMACK 

Ms. MCCORMACK. Congressman, it is definitely an honor to be 

here today to give you testimony on this very important topic of 

election reform. 

This is my 20th year as an elections administrator in this country. I started in Dallas, Texas, where I was election administrator 

for 6 years, and then moved to San Diego, California; and now for 

the past 5 years, I have been the head of elections of Los Angeles. 

Los Angeles has the largest voter base in the country. We have 

4.1 million registered voters and 5,000 voting precincts. Last November, we voted a record high 2,770,000 voters, which was more 

ballots cast in our county and counted in my office than in 41 of 

the 50 states. 

Indeed, we had more absentee ballots in my country than were 

cast in eight of the States. We have 520,000 absentee by mail ballots. 

For a Presidential election, the logistics are similar to a military 

deployment. We hire 25,131 poll workers. As we said, we deal with 

over 500,000 absentee ballots. Some days we have 35,000 applications a day. We turn them around in a one-day turnaround time. 

Clearly this takes hundreds of additional staff to do that. 

We have been on the same voting system in Los Angeles County. 

I would like to think it was a 1970s system, Pam. It is a 1960s system, the punch card voting system, because we started it in Los 

Angeles in 1968. I can tell you, to this moment we are a long way 

away from getting rid of it, because we have no money. To do it 

is something we would love to do. 

We started on this process in conjunction with the November 

election, before what happened in November. Starting in October, 

we instituted a pilot program of the DRE, touch screen voting in 

Los Angeles. It was a huge success. Out of the 2.7 million voters, 

17

we had 27,963 of our voters, including myself, who cast their ballot 

on a DRE system during the early voting period at one of the nine 

locations we set up around the county, where any one of our 4.1 

million voters could have gone to any of these locations and cast 

their ballot. 

To do this was a huge technology challenge, because the first 

thing that happened when they walked in was to have to qualify 

that voter and then set up which ballot they were going to get on 

the DRE. Because we have 17 congressional representatives in our 

county, and many assembly and water boards, we had 263 different 

types of ballots, depending on which one, what area you lived in—

in seven languages—and we had to count them into one of the 

5,000 precincts. 

When you multiply 5,000 times 263 times 7, each one of our 

DREs had 9 million combinations in them and were activated within 4 seconds of pulling up the correct ballot for that voter. 

It was a huge success to the voter. Ninety-nine percent of them 

filled out a survey and said they loved it so much better than 

punch cards. Not a single overvote can be cast, and not a single one 

was cast because you cannot overvote on a DRE system. 

This was not the case with our punch card system, where we had 

a half a percent of our voters in the precincts vote for more than 

one candidate for President. I have to believe that was inadvertent. 

That was 13,000 people who lost their vote. We had a 2.2 percent 

undervote. 

There is a natural undervote for President. We had a .5 percent 

undervote on the DRE, as did Riverside County, which is all DRE. 

So it is probably about a half a percent of the people who did not 

want to vote or were confused, or were just in the middle of indecision, like the rest of the country on who to vote for. 

So take away that half percent, that means we have 1.7 percent 

of the people who probably did not mean to undervote and could 

not understand the system. That was another 61,000 people. 

So taken together, these are a lot of people who did not have 

their votes counted that would have if we did not have a 1960sbased system.

Ms. MCCORMACK [continuing]. Additionally, the DRE system that 

we put in place for the pilot program allowed blind and visually impaired voters to vote without assistance, and this was a huge success. We partnered with the Braille Institute and the Center for 

the Partially Sighted at their own expense, since we have no money 

to do this. 

They mailed out to 8,000 of their own members a brochure that 

we developed with them, letting the blind know that they could go 

to one of these nine locations and vote without assistance. We had 

hundreds of voters, many accompanied only by Seeing Eye dogs, 

come into our sites to vote for the first time in their lives without 

anyone helping them, and it was a wonderful experience. 

Similarly, for people who use a different language, whose first 

language is not English—and we are very diverse in Los Angeles, 

propositions on the ballot are complex, they are hard to understand 

in English—and we had hundreds of our voters choose one of the 

seven languages, and we are very, very pleased that they were able 

to understand the ballot in a much better way than in the past. 

18

None of these are available on punch card. We cannot do this 

type of work with a punch card system. We have a translation of 

the punch card ballot, which is cumbersome and is very costly, so 

clearly we would like to move into a more modern voting system. 

So what are the obstacles to doing that? Well, the obstacle is, 

one—and all of you know what it is—we don’t have sufficient funding, and our pilot project only cost us $70,000 to institute it. But 

for us to go countywide on a modern DRE voting system in Los Angeles County would cost, initial purchase of $100 million. We don’t 

have $100 million, and as Pam Iorio mentioned, the op-scan system 

does not work in Los Angeles, and part of my testimony explains 

why that doesn’t work with seven languages. And replacing one 

piece of paper with another paper ballot, we would be spending 

millions of dollars on ballots every election, and it would just be inappropriate, and we would need another building to store them in. 

So that isn’t going to work. 

Our election last November, with a 7-cents-a-ballot-card, the 

cheapest system you can have—we only spent a half a million dollars on ballot cards. It was a very low cost. Our election costs us 

$20.4 million to put on. We had old, fully depreciated voting equipment; it still cost us $20.4 million. 

There were water districts on the ballot. There were cities on the 

ballot, and each one of the people who were on the ballot in jurisdictions paid their proportional share, with the very noted exception of the Federal Government. We listed the President, the Vice 

President, Senators and U.S. Representatives, and for that, we did 

not get a dime. 

Each of these other jurisdictions cannot afford to pay for their 

share of the ballot, but they do. I do think it is time the Federal 

Government paid their fair share to be on a ballot, which they are 

on for every election. We also have tremendous unfunded mandates. Out of our $20.4 

million for the election, $2 million of that was for compliance with 

the Voting Rights Act and to produce the ballot in the seven languages and the translations and the oral assistance at the polls, 

again, an unfunded mandate that we would like to see some dollars 

come to us. 

But how are we going to get this money? Our local government, 

currently our county board of supervisors, is very much interested 

in converting, but they don’t have the money, and our health department has a $184 million deficit right now. We will remain frustratingly elusive that the top 10 priorities of government, that voting is always the 11th. We forever are relegated to the 11th on the 

top 10. 

In our State government, we have bills right now. We are hoping 

to get money, but if we weren’t spending an additional $54 million 

a day on the spot market to buy electricity, we would probably be 

getting the $300 million that our speaker of the state assembly 

wants to give us, but we have spent $5 billion since January that 

was unbudgeted on electricity with no end in sight, and so the obscurity, at best, and oblivion, at worst, that bill at the State level, 

we will not be seeing the money. 

I would like to echo, elections class of mail would sincerely help 

us as a means to do this. And I would also like to say that the FedVerDate jul 14 2003 02:27 Aug 28, 2003 Jkt 087419 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B419.XXX B419
19

eral Government spends $30 million every year to support democracy building overseas. We don’t spend a dime here. I do think that 

democracy here is worth at least what it is worth to support the 

countries overseas that we support in democracy building. I think 

it is time that we did that. 

The Census last year, the $100 million was spent by the Federal 

Government on an advertising campaign. That was very valuable, 

and it really helped in Los Angeles. We had a much higher turnout 

of people filling out the Census. They understood what it was for, 

and they understood the importance of it. And a similar type of 

campaign at the national level to advertise the process of voting, 

the deadlines, the voter registration, how you actually vote, PSAs, 

how you touch the screen or push a—punch a card would go a long 

way toward making our process more effective. 

I have many things else I would like to say, but I see I am over 

my time. I am sure you have lots of questions, so I am going to 

finish my testimony at this time. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Our last witness, Linda Lamone. 

STATEMENT OF LINDA H. LAMONE 

Ms. LAMONE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is an 

honor to be here. If feel like the little sister to Conny, who has only 

2.7 million registered voters in Maryland. But in any event, Maryland is in a very fortunate position, because we started election reform some time ago. 

We had a very close gubernatorial race in 1994, and the emphasis has been on addressing some of the issues that were raised as 

a result of that election. The governor and the general assembly 

have directed us to create a total election management system, 

which we have done. We are in the process of finally implementing 

a statewide voter registration system. We have rewritten all the 

software, created new software for all of the processes that occur 

in the period of conducting an election from defining the ballot to 

posting the election results on the Web page, to developing campaign finance reporting software and database for campaign expenditures and contributions that is on a searchable Web—on the 

Web page on a searchable database. 

The last piece of the pie was approved by the Maryland general 

assembly at this last session, this last winter, and that is a uniform voting system that can accommodate individuals with disabilities. We are not going to be purchasing it; we will be leasing it. 

The State is going to be providing half of the funding to this, and 

of course would welcome Federal dollars to assist us in doing this. 

The governor and the general assembly would like me to accomplish this by the September election in 2002. We hope that we will 

be able to meet that desire. 

As I said, Maryland has been undergoing election reform now for 

approximately 5 years. The general assembly completely rewrote 

the election code in 1997. They have centralized election administration in Maryland under the State board of elections with me as 

its administrator. I am a nonpartisan, appointed official. I am a 

public officer of the State board of elections. There are five people 

20

appointed by the governor, confirmed by the Senate, three of the 

majority party, two of the minority party. 

We have a very centralized authority in the State board over the 

administration of elections. There is much greater State funding in 

Maryland than, I think, in a lot of other jurisdictions. All of the 

software development and most of the new hardware that we have 

placed in the counties have been paid for by the State. All the communications costs are paid by the State of Maryland. The result is 

that we have very consistent standards. We are very lucky. 

We have one voter registration application for the State. We have 

uniform procedures for virtually every process that the local election boards have to follow, and I submitted some testimony to the 

committee which outlines a lot of the things that we have done in 

the last 5 years. 

And I recognize that this is not particularly typical of what goes 

on in many other States, nor may it be welcome, but it is what 

Maryland decided to do, and it seems to be working well for us. 

You have heard a lot of suggestions for solutions. I will not repeat them. I think we all agree with what has been said here 

today, probably nationally. I would like to add two of my own that 

haven’t—one of which has not been mentioned today and one that 

is sort of—we are implementing in Maryland for the first time. 

As you all know, our society is very mobile, and it is very difficult 

for all of us to keep track of our registered voters. We have no way 

of knowing whether or not people are registered in two different 

States. There is no national database like there is for commercial 

drivers licenses, so we have no way of checking. 

In Maryland, if you are convicted of a second infamous crime, 

you are forever disenfranchised. I have no way of knowing if people 

have been convicted of a crime in another State, let alone if they 

have been sometimes convicted of two crimes in Maryland, although we are working on that. It could be a Federal conviction in 

one State and a State conviction in Maryland, but still, unless the 

person affirmatively tells us that he or she has had that second 

conviction, there is no way of tracking the voters, is what I am saying; and the bottom line is, we need some sort of identification 

number that we can use to track voters. Even if it is within a 

State, it would help us a long way to keeping our voter registration 

records cleaner and track our voters and not have the motor voter 

problems that we had in this last election. As I am sure you have 

heard from other people, under motor voter, people would go to the 

Motor Vehicle Administration, which is what we call the agency in 

Maryland, to change their address. There are signs all over the 

place, ‘‘Register to vote here,’’ ‘‘Vote here,’’ ‘‘Get your voter registration applciation here’’—change their address. And it has a block on 

there that says, which is required by NVRA, ‘‘Do you want this to 

be for voter registration purposes as well?’’ The voter checks it and 

thinks that that changed their voter registration address as well. 

They move to their new county, change their address, check that 

little box. Then they go to the polls on Election Day where they 

think they are supposed to go, and they are not on the precinct register. And it caused—I know anecdotally—I have heard from my 

colleagues around the country, it caused tremendous problems on 

Election Day, and it was an embarrassment to us, and it showed 

21

us the weaknesses in having an outside agency, particularly as 

large as the Motor Vehicle Administration with the number of 

changes of address and license transactions that they handle, being 

responsible, in essence, for voter registrations. 

So be it. That is the way the law reads. 

What we have done in Maryland is, we are going to implement 

what I call a ‘‘once registered, always registered to vote’’ process in 

Maryland. You get one driver’s license when you move to Maryland. You should not have to reregister to vote every time you 

move within the State, as long as you remain a qualified voter, and 

so we are working closely with the MVA. It is going to be a paper 

process, probably for 6 months to a year, but we are working very 

closely with them to make it a paperless transaction so that their 

database will tell my database that Linda Lamone has moved from 

one county to another. Their record will be transferred, and I will 

be sent a new voter notification card, which is what we call the 

‘‘notification of registration’’ in Maryland. I am hoping that that alleviates the problem. 

The general assembly has also given me the ability to use provisional ballots in the future. I am hoping that with this new process 

of treating the State of Maryland, in essence, as a one large jurisdiction for voter registration purposes, that that will greatly reduce 

the need for provisional ballots down the road. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for your testimony. 

Questions? 

Mr. DAVIS. One of the issues that received a lot of attention in 

Florida was the need to improve the database that was the voter 

registry. When Secretary of State Katherine Harris testified here, 

she talked about the fact that Florida was moving out of the privatization model back to the clerk of the court model in Florida and 

that it was going to cost a significant sum. 

Linda, I think you referred to some information—you referred to 

some issues concerning the integrity of the database or the registry 

of voters. And so I guess my first question is, all of y’all have stated 

the case that you would appreciate the Federal government funding some of the costs of improving your voting equipment; and 

would you include the database as part of that? 

Mr. LEWIS. Absolutely, yeah. 

Ms. LAMONE. We spent about $4.5 million developing our statewide voter registration system on software development and hardware for the county. 

Mr. LEWIS. North Carolina has at least that much money invested in theirs. Some of the other States have spent that much or 

more trying to get to that point, and so it is an expensive proposition to get it to work. 

And, secondly, we are probably going to have to find a way to 

marry up to DMV, their database. They have funds, they have resources; we don’t. And their resources were 70 percent—if you look 

at what the Federal Government says—the OEA says, 72 percent 

of all the transactions in voter files belong through the DMV, and 

so that is certainly a place that we are going to have to get closer. 

Michigan and Kentucky already have made this a one-step process so that it is not a two-step process, it is one database. It is one 

22

transaction, not two transactions, and that makes it a whole lot 

easier. 

Mr. DAVIS. My second question pertains to whether you all believe, on behalf of your own voters, as well as generally, we can realistically expect many of the changes we have been discussing to 

take place in time for the 2002 election. I know in Florida that is 

the intention, as well as the intention to begin building on some 

more, superior changes in time for the 2004 election. That will influence how compelling the case is we can make to the appropriators in terms of funding this year. 

And my second question related to 2002 is, if we do try to appropriate some funds and we get that done by the fall or late summer, 

is that soon enough for your planning purposes for changes for 

2002? 

Ms. JACKSON. May I address that? 

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. JACKSON. Number one, I feel very strongly that until the 

concept of an election is a Federal election, we are not going to 

move too far. All elections are important, no matter what level. If 

the money is going to be appropriated, then I feel that it needs to 

be appropriated in time for us to produce the type of elections in 

19—I mean, in 2002 that we have to produce. It doesn’t need to be 

changed. 

I will have elections in May of 2002, my county elections. If I get 

no money from the Federal Government, there will just be certain 

things that I will not be able to do. If the money should come for 

the August or the November election—the November election is the 

Federal election—I have got to change my operation in midstream, 

and that is not good for the voters, nor is it good for the election 

commission. 

Our credibility has been stomped, and we are working hard to 

bring it back up. I would almost rather that—if we can’t have the 

money late 2001 or early 2002, we not get it until 2003 in an offyear so that we begin the even years doing the same thing that we 

started out doing. 

Mr. DAVIS. If we can appropriate the funds and you know they 

are coming by this fall, does that give you enough time to use those 

funds to make the changes you need to make for the 2002——

Ms. JACKSON. That should be ample time. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. I would like to make a comment on that. First 

of all, we would need to know what kind of funding we are talking 

about. Are we talking about matching grants that are going to 

States and then counties apply? So there is a process. Clearly, 

these processes take time, and indeed determining a vendor and a 

contractor process takes time as well. 

What I have proposed to my board of supervisors, that they have 

not yet funded, is a $3 million expansion of our early voting DRE 

project so that we could have 40 or 50 sites, during the couple of 

weeks before the election up through the Saturday and Sunday before the election, for early voting at 40 or 50 locations instead of 

just nine, which was a pilot project. We know that we would have 

hundreds of thousands of people now with this post-punch card environment, and nine locations is insufficient. It was fine for 21,000. 

It won’t work. 

23

So I need to have some money, because my county won’t even give me the $3 million to do the expanded pilot project I am working toward, because I have chosen a vendor for that. In terms of 

a total county conversion, obviously that is impossible in Los Angeles County. It would take a lot longer just to do an RFP and a contract implementation. But I am not the rest of the country, and the 

fact is, if there was money coming through a grant process that we 

could all apply for, we could start the process to get this thing happening, and that is what we need to do. 

We can’t expect, obviously, all of California—and I would like to 

reiterate, one size does not fit all. Some States may either be more 

homogeneous and they can have a voting system. Perhaps even in 

Florida it is possible to have a voting system that works in every 

county, but in Los Angeles, we have to have a DRE system. The 

paper scan system does not work, is my testimony. 

There is a whole section that I have attached. And Alpine County 

in California has 771 voters, and I have 4 million with seven languages. 

So a one-size-fits-all solution is not the issue. We need diversity 

and innovation. But if it were a grant application process, I do 

think that counties would step forward to try to start to modernize, 

and they would have an opportunity to do that with matching 

funds. And we are hoping to get something from the States as well. 

So I certainly would hope that wouldn’t be a reason—that by 

2002 if everybody in the country didn’t have a new voting system 

wouldn’t be an impediment to moving forward as we transition into 

this new process. 

Thank you. 

Mr. DAVIS. And, Ms. McCormack, do you believe that if we did 

appropriate sufficient funds in the fall, that would allow you 

enough time to implement some improvements for the 20——

Ms. MCCORMACK. Absolutely, I want to move forward to the 2002 

elections, even for the March primary in our county, in our State, 

toward this expansion of the DRE project that I have told my board 

I can do for $3 million for this initial—and at this point, I don’t 

have the $3 million, so——

Mr. DAVIS. And if the bill ultimately did end up with some local 

or State match, do you fell like a substantial amount of Federal 

dollars would give you the leverage——

Ms. MCCORMACK. Yes. 

Mr. DAVIS [continuing]. You need to——

Ms. MCCORMACK. Yes. I absolutely do. Absolutely. Thank you. 

Mr. LEWIS. And Mr. Davis, one of the things I think you are 

going to find in most jurisdictions is that they would be reluctant, 

beyond about March of 2002, to have to take on the task of implementing a new voting system. 

Now, in terms of the other—other features of having better voter 

education and better poll worker education, and in terms of making 

sure that we train and make sure our people understand to take 

care of voters rather than to have confrontation with voters. I think 

we can do those kinds of things, but most elections administrators 

are going to be very uncomfortable trying to buy a brand-new voting system and installing it in time for a statewide election. It 

makes you very nervous to do that, because you don’t know what 

24

you are going to encounter on a new voting system. You know what 

you have encountered on the old one. 

With every voting system, you end up—you learn that there is 

a work-around. I mean, none of it is perfect, and so you have to 

figure out, what do your voters do to it and then what does your 

staff do to it and, more importantly, what do the poll workers do 

to it before the voter ever gets there. And so you—you try to use 

those in small elections first, working your way up gradually to the 

point that you then implement it system-wide in a large election 

and hopefully not in a presidential election. 

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, ma’am? 

Ms. MCCORMACK. I just wanted to say, I don’t think you are saying that everybody has to completely convert to the new voting system. If options were available for early voting, like in California, 

where any voter could go early, which we had for the first time last 

year, there would be an option for voters; and I think that is what 

we are trying to offer here, some options for the counties to move 

forward. 

I don’t think it would be—I hope it wouldn’t be a requirement 

for counties to fully implement a new voting system. Frankly, there 

are vendor resource issues. There are all kinds of contractual 

issues, that type of thing. 

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, one last question——

The CHAIRMAN. Sure. 

Mr. DAVIS [continuing]. To Pam Iorio. 

In your judgment, are some of the small- and medium-sized 

counties in Florida going to need some Federal assistance in order 

for the county to absorb the cost of the conversion for the 2002 election? 

Ms. IORIO. The governors task force that was formed in the aftermath of the 2000 election estimated that the complete cost to move 

each precinct to—precinct-based optical scan is about $10,000 per 

precinct, including all costs, privacy booths, everything. And so the 

$7,500 allocated per precinct by the Florida Legislature is most of 

it, but I still think some of the very small counties—well, all of 

the—the counties that have to make that transition will still have 

some local monies that will be needed to cover the cost. 

Mr. DAVIS. Okay. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Reynolds, any questions? 

Mr. REYNOLDS, Ms. Schmidt, you cited that the National Voting 

Registration Act was an example of legislation that, by opposing 

uniformity, had a negative impact on some State and local jurisdictions. I would be interested in your comment and some of the other 

panel members’ comments on that—that point, if you might, my 

first question. 

Ms. SCHMIDT. Certainly. I think in our county particularly, we 

have a very difficult time in tracking voters, and I think the—

Linda from Maryland put it very well. We have a difficult time in 

connecting with the DMV offices in order to keep our list 100 percent accurate. 

In the State of Kansas, we do not have a centralized day-to-day 

voter system. We send our file on a quarterly basis to the secretary 

of state’s office to do a matching of our voters. We have the need 

for having a little more instantaneous information. Our voters in 

25

our county move very frequently. We spend an enormous amount 

of our staff time doing nothing but updating the voter records from 

moves. 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Anyone else? No comment? Does anybody else on 

the panel have a comment on the Voting Rights Act? 

Mr. LEWIS. On the Voting Rights Act or the——

Mr. REYNOLDS. I am sorry, Voter Registration. 

Mr. LEWIS. I think what most of us in the profession are really 

looking at and saying is that we have responsibility for some of the 

things in there, and yet no authority and certainly no funding. And 

we don’t mind having the responsibility as long as you have the authority to go with the responsibility, so that—I mean, it bothers us 

to be accused of not having good voter lists when outside agencies 

may or may not actually report the information that they have 

gathered to you. 

And so we don’t mind—the good feature of NVRA is that it does 

indeed make more people eligible to vote and we are all happy with 

that. We want people in the process. 

What we are not happy with is that you get agencies that you 

have no authority to go train or no authority to say, guys, you are 

doing it wrong, or even, here is the attitude you ought to have 

about it; that this really is an enabling process and not something 

where you kind of tell folks that you don’t care whether they are 

there or not. 

And so those are the real reasons that we have problems with 

it, both money and no authority. 

Ms. IORIO. I think the Congress made a, you know, conscious decision in 1993, when they passed the National Voter Registration 

Act, that there should be very few barriers, institutional barriers, 

to the registration process and that the voter—the registrant 

should put down very little information on the form and that the 

process should be as open and as easy as possible in order to increase voter registration. That has occurred. We have dramatically 

increased voter registration throughout this country. 

Now, the flip side of it is that you have—it is the last of the great 

honor systems, and you have errors that are going to be made in 

a society where people just pick up a form and fill it out, mail it 

in, or pick it up at a variety of State and county agencies. So there 

is just a trade-off there; and as a country, we just have to decide 

what we want. Do we want a very restrictive registration system 

but one that is tightly controlled and doesn’t have many errors, or 

do we want one that is very open and accessible with no barriers 

at all, but that we have a particular error rate associated with it? 

And I think we have already made that decision as a country and 

a Congress and we are living with it, and we have improved and 

dramatically increased voter registration because of it. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. I would just like to comment and reiterate the 

comments of my colleagues that clearly in our county with 27 DMV 

offices of the 80 in the State and 5,000 records a week coming to 

us from DMV on voter files, we do have a 50 percent match of 

those that actually match up to our file because when people register at the DMV, they don’t have to have—they can use a post office box. They don’t have to have a residence. We are not sure it 

is the same person. 

26

There is all kinds of software issues about, is this the same, you 

know, John Smith as the John Smith we think this might be on 

the file? 

We have met with all 27 of our offices. We have asked them, and 

they did a better job in November than in the past, although we 

still have thousands of people that thought they had registered or 

did try to register at the DMV, and we didn’t get their records. 

But to follow up with the paper on a more expeditious fashion, 

these computer bumps also come to us usually about a month late, 

which is obviously when voter registration deadlines are now—in 

California, we used to have 29 days before the election; our new 

law, in January, it is 15 days. 

We are already a month behind on the NVRA records now. So 

when we get these records through the State system, they are 

going to be completely outdated, because there will be many people 

who will have done the process, but—however, didn’t ever get 

through to us until way after the election. 

These are just some of the challenges we have to deal with. 

The provisional voting process does help, because we in California, anyone who is sure they are registered and they should be 

on the list—because I have to tell you, we make administrative errors and get people on the wrong list—do have an opportunity to 

vote. And then during our 28-day certification process, we do clear 

those registrations. 

So in that 28 days following the election in which, statewide in 

California, we added a million extra votes into the—10 percent of 

the votes were counted after Election Day, some as many as 3 

weeks after Election Day. We always count them; it takes time. 

So during this process, we are able to try to work out some of 

these kinks. But there is no perfect process and whenever, as Doug 

mentions, interagencies are involved in a process, it is hard enough 

in my own office—I am also the recorder of deeds in my office, and 

we do 10,000 property transfers a day, and we are also—I am also 

the birth, death and marriage commissioner, where our death files 

have——

Mr. HOYER. You have too much to do. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. I do. I have 800 employees, and it is a problem. Where—our death file computer system doesn’t even match up 

with our voter system, so we are doing a lot of paperwork instead 

of computer bumps in my own office because of software issues on 

different sides of the office. 

So it is—those are all just challenges, though. I don’t think we 

should immediately say something is wrong with the process because it is a little bit more difficult now to administer it. 

I think we can work through some of these problems. We are 

working very hard with the State DMV to come up with a new 

form that is more user friendly, like they have in many of the other 

States. Ours is a process that is impossible for the DMV client to 

understand. So I do think that we can work through some of these, 

but perfection is never going to happen in the election process. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. I understand that Pam 

Iorio has an airplane to catch. So I wanted to mention that to the 

members of the committee. 

27

Ms. IORIO. Thank you. Thank you for having me here today. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate your time. 

Mr. HOYER. Could I just thank Ms. Iorio for being with us? I 

found her testimony—I found the testimony of all the witnesses to 

be outstanding and very, very helpful, and I appreciate your observations. 

I wanted to ask you some questions, but I will ask the others. 

I don’t want you to miss your plane. 

Ms. IORIO. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Reynolds, do you have any additional followup questions? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess maybe two. 

One, should we—when we look at the discussion of funding, some 

in testimony referred to today as ‘‘unfunded mandates,’’ others on 

Federal elections that did not receive any Federal dollars and yet 

we have imposed uniformity on a voter registration program, are 

there conditions that the Congress should place on the distribution 

of Federal money? And I am a—kind of a local government guy, so 

I ask that very carefully as I say it. 

But as you are on the front line, and both State officials have 

said, send money to the States, and hearing testimony today that 

money is coming in to improve the system by the Federal government, are there conditions? Should we require voter ID at the time 

of election? Should we review some of our voter registration on 

purging lists if people haven’t voted, so there is assistance in the 

flexibility of registering, that we also don’t have registrations all 

over the place? 

I am curious your reaction to that question. 

Ms. JACKSON. As I stated in my testimony, I am hoping, after 

this crisis with Florida and what we are going through now, that 

we will go back—that you all will go back and look at NVRA. There 

are—and it is one of my pet peeves, I have to admit it. So I have 

been very careful in how I scrutinize it and where I scrutinize it, 

so that I don’t get in trouble. 

But I think it is probably one of the—well, next to one of the 

worst things that could have happened to the election community. 

It was an opportunity for elected officials to come up with an idea 

of, hey, this sounds good; we will get more people registered. There 

were no local people involved, to my knowledge, in working up this 

legislation, to get it ready. 

As elected officials, that is your first concern, let’s get enough 

people registered to vote. Every one of you has done massive registration drives prior to your election. So you like the idea of DMV 

and all of these other agencies getting involved. They are not election people. We can’t go out there and do what they do; we would 

be raising all kind of cain. 

I have sat and watched the operation at the DMV office in Chattanooga, and they have got it perfected so that you would not think 

there would be any problems. But once that applicant goes out the 

door, I don’t know where that application goes, because most of 

them do not come to us, and I think you have to understand that 

in certain localities, there is a large influx of people seeking a driver’s license, and these people, frankly, don’t have the time to fool 

28

with it. But we get the blame for it when that person doesn’t get 

to vote. 

And I am not there to deny people the right to vote. I wish you 

would go back and look at it because it—it has created too many 

problems. That is the deal. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Reynolds, additional questions? Thank you. 

Mr. Hoyer. 

Mr. HOYER. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, again, I want 

to reiterate how appreciative I am of the testimony that has been 

given by people who actually, obviously day-to-day, have to run the 

election system and get registrants from the Motor Vehicle Administration to the records at local precincts. 

The anecdotal evidence of which Linda Lamone talked, I was in 

a precinct—not my own precinct, but I traveled around Election 

Day, was in there, and happened to see friends of mine who had 

had this happen to them. They registered at motor vehicles and 

were not on the rolls, and they were sent away. And whether she 

got back or not, I don’t know. 

But in any event—I was going to ask Ms. Iorio, but let me ask 

the rest of you: She stressed in her testimony, all the experts I 

have heard agree, that if you are going to have an accurate system, 

it has got to be precinct-based. Once you get to central counting, 

you have lost the voter; the voter is gone. 

Secondly, you need to be able to have technology which corrects—or at least notifies the voter that they have not voted correctly. 

Does everybody agree that those are two critical things that we 

need to have? 

Now, let me ask you, on the DREs, two questions. Obviously it 

corrects you immediately. You can’t, in effect—it is very hard to 

misvote. You cannot vote, but you can’t overvote. Technically, you 

can’t overvote, correct? To that extent, it is like a lever machine. 

The lever machine has the advantage, you can’t overvote on a lever 

machine, assuming it is working correctly. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. They are not all the same. I saw one that has 

been certified recently in California that you could actually be moving your hand down and inadvertently vote for someone else, because the one I used and the one that I was on—the style I was 

only familiar with is, in order to unvote your choice, which lights 

up in a different color, you have to go back and take it off. you 

know, you can’t—you are trying to hit something else. 

You would have to go tell—maybe he didn’t understand—ask the 

poll worker, well, how come I want to change my mind and I can’t 

do it? 

I think that is preferable to one that, as you move your hand 

down the screen, if you inadvertently—but again those are designed—and when you have your system panel on that, you will see 

all of that. 

I personally prefer the fact that once you have hit it, you can’t 

undo it unless you touch it again, but that is just a personal preference. But in terms of the ones up until I saw this one recently, 

I would have answered your question, yes, it is impossible to 

overvote. But——

Mr. HOYER. Actually, since it is——

29

Ms. MCCORMACK. It is not really an overvote. You wouldn’t be 

overvoting; you would be taking off maybe the choice you actually 

wanted. You wouldn’t be overvoting if your hand went down—and 

mine did when I was playing with this one, and I didn’t mean to 

do that. But all the ones, I believe, unless—they certainly should; 

if we had the appropriate management standards in place, which 

we are hoping to have the Federal Government help us do, would 

let the voter review their ballot at the end. 

And we have that in our system, where there was a ‘‘review ballot’’ button. You would go back and look, what did I do? And that 

is similar to the precinct-based optical scan, which—none of which, 

of course, you have in punch card or, by the way, absentee. 

We have to remember a lot of people are voting by mail, and I 

think it is very important we design our instructions—and we have 

completely changed ours to be very graphic and colorful—so that 

people will have the best opportunity in that mail at home not to 

make these errors; although, of course, if they do, they don’t have 

a piece of equipment to put it in to correct it. 

Mr. HOYER. Let me ask you something on recounts. I would like 

to hear your comments to this. 

To the extent that you go to a paperless system, lever machines 

are obviously a paper system, and the only recount on a lever machine is to get the count off the back of the machine again. If the 

tumbler didn’t work, you will never know it, because there is no 

way to check that. 

On the DREs, am I correct—I don’t understand the technology. 

Well, I have never used it either. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. It is different. It is different than that. 

Mr. HOYER. How do you go back and——

Ms. MCCORMACK. We had a recount. 

Mr. HOYER [continuing]. Recount? How do you do that? 

Ms. MCCORMACK. We have a recount after every election. We had 

one in Malibu, six votes apart for a development issue. And what’s 

worse than a development issue in Malibu? So it was ugly, but you 

know—the system prints out ballot images of—it is not associated 

with the voter, so we did actually have—obviously, out of our 

21,000 ballots that were cast on DRE, some of them were from 

Malibu, so we were able to print out the ballot images. 

Riverside County in California had a totally DRE system for 

their election. It is the largest all-DRE election in the country, with 

700 precincts, and they had a recount in one of their districts and 

had no problem. And the focus then became the absentee, because 

the absentees aren’t DRE. You don’t mail a DRE to a person, so 

the recount then ends up focusing on the absentee ballot. 

Mr. HOYER. So is there, in effect, an image that you can go back 

and——

Ms. MCCORMACK. Yes, there is. 

Mr. LEWIS. Federal voting system standards require ballot image 

retention. The one thing that makes some people nervous is that 

the recount cannot possibly come out differently than the machine 

printed it. I mean——

Ms. MCCORMACK. That is a good thing. 

Mr. LEWIS. Yes, and that is a good thing. I mean, this is where 

you get into that age-old argument about whether or not we can 

30

wean ourselves from paper ballots; and those who are of the philosophy that they cannot yet trust the full electronics want the paper 

ballot. The rest of us, who are acquainted with how good the electronic stuff is now, say, gee, let’s go to that, and then let’s go 

through that. But that is—the Federal voting system standards require ballot image retention scrambled so that you cannot identify 

it to a voter. 

Mr. HOYER. Let me ask you about—Connie Schmidt made the 

statement, ‘‘No voter is turned away.’’ I personally think that is 

what we ought to have in every precinct in America, not by mandate, but by practice, Federal standard advisory, though it may be, 

and that you provide provisional ballots. 

Now I would like to hear the comments of all of you, particularly 

Ms. McCormack, on provisional ballots, which may be a—at the 

level of voters—the numbers of voters you are dealing with, an incredible problem for you. But I would like to hear all of you—your 

comments on that, on provisional ballots, because as you know, 

that is a major part of the legislation that Senator Dodd and Congressman Conyers have put in, and many others. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. Well, I am a major advocate of provisional voting. I think it protects the election official. I think it protects the 

poll worker who doesn’t have to deal with turning anyone away. 

And mistakes happen. We get people on wrong poll lists, people—they are registered. Now we have E–15, 15 days before the 

election registration. We had 155,000 new registrations on our 

deadline, E–29, last October. It took us 2 weeks to get those on the 

list. If we are going to be getting them on the list, I suppose a day 

or two before the election, clearly those are not going to be on the 

list at the polls, those last-minute ones. We do a FedEx overnight 

to our 5,000 polls. Some of the poll workers say, oh, that is what 

that FedEx was—but let’s just don’t go there with some of those 

anecdotal stories. 

But the bottom line is, if the voter shows up and he or she is 

not on the list, we certainly shouldn’t penalize them if there has 

been an administrative error. 

We had 101,000 provisional ballots cast in our county. We went 

through those in the 31⁄2 weeks after the election, one by one, as 

we have to, and determined whether or not the person already had 

voted absentee, because many of them have mailed in their absentee and said, oh, I mailed it yesterday on Monday. Do you think 

it will get there? And we always advise them, probably not with 

our post office. 

So we check all the absentees first, and then if they did not—

if we counted their absentee, we don’t count their provisional. So 

it is a one-by-one analysis. We have counted 61,000 of these. It 

takes time.

One of the things I think that needs to be recognized is that 

there are two things in elections that we all want. We want speed 

and we want accuracy. Speed we get with unofficial returns election night. Accuracy has to wait until all of these processes are 

completed. 

In a county of our size and in our State, we are allowed four 

weeks to finalize our certification of the vote. We added 182,000 

31

ballots in during that 4 weeks. We felt comfortable that it was accurate. 

We do have recounts. I am not saying these is not an occasional 

one that a provisional should have been counted and wasn’t, and 

you know, that is dealt with in a recount or vice versa. Perfection, 

again, doesn’t always happen, but it does allow the person—I 

would have hated to think that maybe 100,000 people at our polls 

could have been turned away in our county alone because they 

weren’t on the list or because of some problem, when 61,000 of 

those were valid, accurate ballots to be cast. 

I know it is difficult. I think States need to consider a longer certification time between the unofficial returns and certifying the official results. One week is inadequate, in my opinion. You can certify an election in 1 week; I doubt if you can certify an accurate 

election in 1 week. At least 2 weeks, I think, is required. 

But, again, that is a State’s prerogative, and we are glad that we 

have more time. But it is a major effort——

Mr. HOYER. How much time do you have? 

Ms. MCCORMACK. We have 28 days in California. It really takes 

us that. We work around the clock. We usually try to get done by 

Thanksgiving; that is our goal. We like to be out of there by 

Thanksgiving, which is about 3 weeks. 

Mr. HOYER. Did you want to comment? 

Mr. LEWIS. I just did a survey at the Election Center where we 

surveyed the States and asked the States how many of them had 

provisional ballots. We had 39 responses as of the day before yesterday. Nineteen of the States do not offer—out of that first 39 that 

responded, 19 of them do not have a provisional ballot. 

Mr. HOYER. The figure I have is that 17 States have provisional 

ballot provisions. 

Mr. LEWIS. And so what we end up with is—of course some of 

those States are same-day-registration States. So a provisional ballot wouldn’t be necessary——

Mr. HOYER. The same-day-ballot States are in addition to that, 

as I——

Mr. LEWIS. And North Dakota has no voter registration. So 

theirs—and then a handful of the States have a process that is 

easier, in their minds, than provisional ballots because all they do 

is require the voter to swear an affidavit and say that they live 

there, and then they will go ahead and count their ballot in that 

election. If it turns out that they were—didn’t live where they said 

they lived, then there is no getting that vote back. But—so we have 

a handful of States that have that provision and don’t want provisional ballots because provisional ballots, in that case, would be 

more restrictive. 

But if we can find a way to define provisional ballots to include 

these other aspects, then we probably can—I mean, I think most 

of us in the elections business, we want voters to feel welcome in 

this process, and we want the idea of a provisional ballot—even 

though it is an administrative nightmare on the back end, you 

know, you want it, because you want that voter to feel good about 

the process. 

Mr. HOYER. Did anybody else want to comment on that? 

Ms. Schmidt. 

32

Ms. SCHMIDT. I understand that the provisional ballot in our 

county, it is very successful. We—in every election, we actually end 

up registering people who were not registered. Our provisional ballot envelope is actually a voter registration application that we 

have them fill out. So if they are not a registered voter there, they 

are then a registered voter for future elections, so it is all very 

positive. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. And for those that we don’t count, even though 

we don’t have to by law, I send a notification to each one of them. 

I don’t say, your vote didn’t count; I say, there has been some problem with your registration, we would like to get you back on the 

files. 

So we are actually following up and trying to make sure that we 

don’t have this perpetual provisional person who thinks that once 

they have voted provisional they are going to be on the list. Because if they weren’t registered, or we can’t find any record of a 

registration, or if they were one of these DMV folks that were 

dropped out of the ozone, which happens, at least it won’s happen 

to them the next time. 

Mr. HOYER. Okay. Good. 

Mr. Chairman, I don’t know what your time frame—I know you 

have been—okay. 

Let me ask you something, Ms. McCormack. You recently had a 

mayoral race. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. We still are having a mayoral race. We are in 

a runoff between the top two June 5th. It is going to be very close, 

and it is all punch card. 

Mr. HOYER. So my question is premature. I was going to ask you 

about your experience November to, now May, but April, as to 

whether or not, as a result of any actions you may have taken between November and today, that the punch card system seems to 

in the primary be more accurate in any way. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. We did a ‘‘got chad’’ campaign, a takeoff of the 

‘‘got milk’’ campaign. We publicized a really nice poster, ‘‘got chad,’’ 

and put it on every ballot box so that when people were beginning 

to put their ballot into the box, they saw this colorful picture of go 

to the back of your ballot and take off your chad. 

Our poll workers were chad freaks. All of a sudden now they all 

were asking every voter, ‘‘check for chad,’’ ‘‘check for chad.’’ And we 

still had chad. We had less chad than we have ever had before. 

Less chad doesn’t mean no chad, but——

Mr. HOYER. It is a strange language we have all learned. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. And I have been around for 20 years in allpunch-card counties, and I always liked it better when only about 

20 people in the country knew what ‘‘chad’’ meant, except that it 

was a country in Africa or a man’s name. But we are not there anymore. 

So now we are working very hard on education. Clearly it helped 

a little bit. If it is close, which it may be on June 5th—it looks like 

it is going to be very close—we will be, I am sure, having recounts 

and ballot intent determinations. 

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Lewis, as you know, you have been working with 

our office of the legislation that we have prepared. Your body is included on our advisory board. 

33

By the way, since we have had these hearings, since ESL testified, we have had them included, I think, the governors were included, but some of the other organizations were not, that we think 

ought to be included. 

But what kind of advice would you offer in terms of the Congress 

acting now, and what ought to be included now, and what, perhaps, 

could be done down the line? You obviously in your testimony 

would——

Mr. LEWIS. I think we—certainly if you are going to provide 

funds for voting systems, don’t restrict it to only voting systems, 

please. And certainly I see—I think in your particular legislation, 

you are providing funds for counties to get rid of precinct—I mean, 

punch card systems, and that is fine. I don’t think any of us want 

to get into the position of trying to defend punch card systems. 

But the real truth is that we have got some other parts of this 

process that are equally important, and in fact, probably far more 

important than voting systems. Voting systems are certainly the 

largest part of the expense, but voter education has got to be every 

bit as important as this. Certainly election official education has 

got to be every bit as important as this. Poll worker education has 

got to be every bit as important as any of these other things. 

And so if you all are going to start directing some funds immediately and you want those to get into the stream immediately and 

you want to see some impacts immediately in 2002, it is unlikely 

to be on the voting system side in 2002. It is more likely to be on 

the infrastructure side, to be on the systemic problems that we 

know have existed not only in this election, but in previous elections; and certainly became, you know, absolutely common knowledge in the election process in Florida. 

So we need the funds to get that process really rolling, and as 

long as you all give us the flexibility to allow those funds to be applied in ways that we know will improve the system and make the 

system work better, and so that it is more responsive to the voters 

and that it allows the voter to get more involved in this and to be 

more satisfied as a result of the process, that is where the money 

needs to be. And so that is where you get started. 

Statewide databases are going to take a while to develop, and so 

they can come—I mean, the money needs to be there to encourage 

folks to do that, but it doesn’t have to be instantaneous. But certainly these things that are voter-centered and systemic problemcentered need to be immediate if you are going to begin to have 

any impact with it, because some of it we are not going to be able 

to do without the funds. 

I mean, we are not going to be able to have good voter education 

programs without some funding of that. We are not going to be 

able to have good poll worker training—I mean, additional poll 

worker training or, hopefully, even better poll workers, being able 

to recruit a higher caliber and more supply of poll workers, unless 

we have some ability to do that. 

And certainly in terms of getting these folks educated, the Election Center trains 600 to 1,000 of them every year, and that is not 

enough. The one consistent thing that I hear from almost all jurisdictions, including some of the ones that are wealthier here, is that 

they can’t afford to send many of their people to training. It is beVerDate jul 14 2003 02:27 Aug 28, 2003 Jkt 087419 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B419.XXX B419
34

cause their county commissioners don’t want them to leave the 

State’s borders, in some cases, the county’s borders, because it costs 

money. 

So those are—I think this is that we need and we can get into 

and have ready in 2002 if you will allow us to do those things now. 

Voting systems are probably going to come in 2003, 2005, 2007, 

2009 because, quite frankly, if we—if you guys gave us $58 billion 

tomorrow, it would take a while for all of those jurisdictions to be 

able to absorb that, get a voting system, and get the companies to 

be able to train them on that voting system. Because it is a 

small——

Mr. HOYER. Thank you for those observations. 

As you probably know, in the legislation that I put in—and I 

don’t expect that to move, because Mr. Ney and I, I think, will 

come up with a piece of legislation that Mr. Ney will sponsor and 

I will cosponsor. But the legislation that we put in, we have $150 

million in there for all the items you have just mentioned—actually, $140 million, with $10 million set aside for research. 

Mr. LEWIS. For research? 

Mr. HOYER. For research on—because there is really no RDT&E 

money. There is a lot of money for research, development, test and 

evaluation at the Defense Department, but on this issue, there is 

no research money. And because the marketplace is so slow, you 

buy something in 1960 and you have still got it in 2000. There is 

not much incentive for manufacturers to come up with new technology. 

Mr. LEWIS. Absolutely. 

Mr. HOYER. So we want to spur technology. So 140 million—and 

that figure, Mr. Chairman, may have to be substantially larger, because as you—particularly if Ms. McCormack is going to do DREs.

We have keyed the $437 billion, that is $6,000 a precinct, on the 

theory that—I think Pam Iorio gave the full cost of everything, but 

the machines—the county machines themselves cost about $5,700. 

So we put $6,000 times 72,000 precincts which use the punch cards 

and that was the figure to get rid of the punch cards. 

However, obviously there is a need for, as you point out, voter 

education; and election official education, we know, is a critical 

component. And I want to say that I have served on the Treasury 

Postal Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee for 18 years 

and have gone from a time when we had over a billion dollars, Mr. 

Chairman, in what is called revenue forgone. That is money that 

we pay the postal department for revenue that they forgo, because 

they give special rates. We included newspapers, da, da, da. We 

have gone down now where we are very, very limited to the blind 

and some other limited costs. 

But I think the proposal that a number of you have put in here 

with respect to the—and we have referenced in the Motor Vehicle 

Registration Act, but we did not implement it, the preferential mail 

rate. There is no excuse for us charging first-class rates for sample 

ballots to be sent out or education to voters to be sent out, because 

the cost simply—I live in—or used to live in a fairly rich county, 

Prince Georges County just down the road. It is a relatively 

wealthy—we live between Rockefeller and Gates. So we are not—

35

Fairfax County and Montgomery County, so we are not perceived 

as rich, but the bottom line is, we are a pretty wealthy county. 

We couldn’t send out, Mr. Chairman, 2 years ago, a sample ballot, because they didn’t have a—Linda, you remember that; we 

didn’t have enough money. And we ought to do something about 

that, and that ought to be included. 

Again, we could go on till, I think, probably 12 o’clock tonight 

and learn from you folks, because you are on the front line. You 

really do know what is happening and what is real. I hope that you 

will dedicate the next 30, 60 days, not full-time—you have got a 

mayoral election, things of that nature—but to working with us, all 

of us, to come up with both short-term and long-term ways in 

which we can partner together. Not that we can tell you how to do 

things, but how we can together come up with standards, not mandatory standards but standards—you obviously have all talked 

about the Office of Education Administration. They have done some 

very good work. They are underfunded. 

We can—I want to, frankly, move them out so we have a focus 

on that—on elections as opposed to campaign finance and elections. 

The chairman and I both agree that they are obviously related, but 

they are not the same issue. 

And so I hope that we can work closely with all of you and with 

your colleagues in coming up with legislation which will make a 

partnership that we can—and here is the phrase I use, so that we 

can have elections in the United States of America as good as the 

rest of the world thought we had. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. Or that we have helped fund with the rest of 

the world. 

Mr. HOYER. Yeah. I understand that. The $30 million, I think a 

year, has been very well spent. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. I am not saying it is not well spent. I am a 

total advocate. 

Mr. HOYER. Your point is well taken that if we can spend it in 

other countries, we ought to spend it here in a geometric—geometrically multiplied way. 

Mr. LEWIS. And the point is, in 225 years of this democracy, the 

Federal Government has not put one dime into the cost of elections. 

That has been borne entirely by the local jurisdictions, and it is 

about time you all contribute to this process. 

The CHAIRMAN. One comment I wanted to make on that. Members asked me—and I kept saying for the—for the systems to go 

to touch-screens or the—maybe an option of seven or eight different 

pieces of equipment. That is why we are having an expo in here. 

So I am not saying you have to have a touch-screen system, but 

let’s say that we all find that there are nine or ten devices out 

there that are good, plus the training money. And people said to 

me, well, how much is that going to cost?

The CHAIRMAN. It is about $5 billion, with a B, dollars. 

Now, I have not been here a whole long time, but I know that 

we have spent $500,000 to study cows burping. If we can do that, 

then I don’t think we should be scared at the $5 billion with a B 

for democracy. People have given a higher price than that with 

their lives. The figure of the $5 billion at the end of the day I don’t 

think is something that is going to—— 

36

Mr. LEWIS. It is the cost of freedom. That is all it is. 

The CHAIRMAN. Most of the questions have been answered. I 

don’t want to hold you all here any longer. I have just a thought 

on Federal holiday. 

Mr. Lewis, I know your statement on that—I have one thought 

that says that you have a Federal holiday and if you have a long 

weekend, your end result might be you go out of town. That is a 

possibility. 

So I just wondered—and anybody else—are you of the same opinion of Mr. Lewis, or of a different opinion about voter turnout? 

Ms. LAMONE. It would potentially free up election judges, but it 

probably more likely would free up polling places. All of the jurisdictions are constantly looking for accessible polling places. 

I think one of the things that I plan to ask my Maryland General 

Assembly to do is to give some sort of incentive to the State workers, like the day off with pay, if they serve as election judges. We 

have got to get a younger pool of people working, and we are fortunate in Maryland because we only have two elections every 2 years. 

We do not have a lot of elections in between. 

But giving State workers a day off with pay if they serve as election judges or some other——

The CHAIRMAN. What about the voter turnout? I know it is speculation on your part, but what about voter turnout? Does it help 

or hurt it? 

Ms. LAMONE. Doug may be in a better position to answer. 

Mr. NEY. I don’t think Doug is for that. 

Mr. LEWIS. We are for experimenting with it. I think we ought 

to experiment with it and maybe even sunset it, so it lasts a certain period of time; and if it is not working, then we kill it. If it 

is working, then we continue with it. 

The truth is that all the things we have ever attempted to increase voter turnout and all the reasons we were ever told that 

things would increase voter turnout, the only thing that has ever 

done that is mail elections, M-A-I-L elections. That is the only 

thing that so far has worked. All the rest of them have not increased voter turnout. 

The CHAIRMAN. The other question I had was about just a little 

elaboration on the problems with uniform poll closing, because Mr. 

Tauzin the Committee on Energy and Commerce obviously has had 

some opinions on that, and some other things. 

We cannot tell the press that you cannot report early. We can 

ask them to cooperate. But what about uniform poll closing? And 

anybody else on the panel. What about that, where you structure 

the hours from the West Coast to the East Coast? 

Ms. LAMONE. It would increase the number of hours that the 

polls would be open and, therefore, stressing the poll worker situation even more. That is one of my major concerns about it. I don’t 

know what my fellow panelists say. 

Mr. LEWIS. Yes. 

Ms. JACKSON. My concern would be the poll workers, unless we 

got the money and the resources of other election employees to 

work on Election Day. 

As far as the media is concerned, it is just another arm out there 

controlling the election process, if that makes any sense. 

37

The CHAIRMAN. It does. 

Ms. JACKSON. I feel very strongly about all these people being involved and having all the solutions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Whether it is intentional or unintentional, it is 

a control factor that comes in that way. 

One other thing I wanted to ask, actually, Ms. McCormack, I had 

heard this stated, that Los Angeles was happy with the punch 

cards. But I am gathering from your testimony, it is not that L.A. 

is happy with them as much as you have them until you can get 

something else, the money to do something else. Is that a correct 

assessment? 

Ms. MCCORMACK. I think it is a fine line we walk to keep people 

confident that their vote is going to count. We are going to be 

punch cards for the foreseeable future. We want people to feel like 

and understand the system and use it to the best that they can. 

I think now in a way this crisis has everyone focused a little more 

on how to use it more appropriately. 

So we are trying to not have a crisis of confidence and a problem 

where we have a backlash, that voters do not want to vote because 

they think their ballots do not count, anyway. But at the same 

time, up to in 1999 in California, when DREs were certified, there 

was really not a good alternative for me to go to. There has not 

really been for 33 years something else we could go to. 

Now we have identified something that we really do feel would 

meet our needs into the foreseeable future and be better for all voters, not just some voters, but the cost is so expensive and prohibitive—and with matching grants, hopefully, hopefully some money 

from the Federal, some money from the States, and I would think 

that even the locals would have to feel some obligation to put in 

some money towards it. 

The CHAIRMAN. I think if the money—if there is money coming 

from here and there is a match, I still think that is an incentive 

for the local districts. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. I totally believe that. I think an incentive 

would be there. 

The CHAIRMAN. You have a recount coming. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. Let’s hope we don’t have a recount. I have an 

election in 3 weeks. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am glad I am actually supporting this issue. On 

Tuesday in my hometown of St. Clairsville, Ohio, on the school 

levy, there were 1,888 votes for it and 1,888 votes against it. I did 

vote. But we are going to back through that and count those. Those 

are punch cards so I am waiting for dimples and pregnancies on 

the ballot, for something to come up, and there might be a controversy of what was the correct vote. So we are going through that 

on the recount. 

Ms. MCCORMACK. It sounds like fun. I have had several tie votes 

in my county, as well. They are never fun. 

The CHAIRMAN. I have one comment. I want to comment on, first 

of all, this wonderful testimony by everybody involved. 

We do want to stress here about local involvement and local voice 

on this issue. We can’t put this together across the Nation unless 

we have the input and some type of feeling by locals—and you are 

about as local as you can get—that there is an involvement in the 

38

process and also a sympathy and an understanding out of the Congress of your needs and what you need to do to carry out the election process. 

In Carolyn Jackson’s testimony, there was a wonderful statement 

there about a long-overdue dialogue. That is what I think, by your 

presence here today, is helping us with that; and by the committee 

working towards this, it does bring the dialogue up. It keeps the 

subject fresh and keeps the interest of people towards the Congress, expecting, again, something to be done. 

I just wanted to really commend all of you on your testimony. It 

was very good.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, one of the things that we did not get 

to, and it is pretty late, we don’t want to get into it now, is the 

issue of overseas voting and military voting. That is obviously of 

great concern to us. When we send people overseas, we want to ensure the fact that they have the right to veto. 

If you have any comments on that that you might want to submit 

to us as issues that you find in your jurisdiction, I think we would 

like to have that, both civilian absentees and military absentees. 

Secondly, I would like to make an observation that all of you 

have talked about, and we know that in every jurisdiction getting 

enough people to administer elections is tough. It really seems to 

me that we ought to, in a cooperative way, make this a program 

in which college students all over America really ought to participate. That would be a tremendous positive education. 

I will tell you, in my area, and I represent an urban county, 

Prince Georges County, right here, 800,000 plus people, I hardly 

ever saw partisanship or, as a matter of fact, I never saw partisanship. There were Democratic judges, Republican judges. You could 

not tell the difference, except that they had a sign on. None of 

them had anything to do with politics in the sense that they were 

there to try do what all of you have said, make sure that this election process ran correctly. 

It seems to me if we got a lot of young college kids involved, 

young college adults involved in this process in every college and 

university in America, A, it would provide a tremendous number 

of people; and, B, it would provide a tremendous education for 

these young people on how democracy works. 

I want to make a comment. I don’t always agree with George 

Will, but he wrote a column that I agreed with 100 percent. It had 

to do with the Internet voting. In effect, he said, I am not for Internet voting because I believe that electing a president or a governor 

or mayor, a State legislator, a city councilperson, is a 

communitarian process. While we understand that there have to be 

absentees because everybody cannot get there, but coming together 

and voting is such a sacred participatory part of our democracy, it 

seems to me, that it is a thing that I—I like to see people in line. 

I don’t like to see them in line for a long time. 

The first time I ran for the State senate in 1966, people did not 

get out of the polling place until after 1 a.m. Why? There were 19 

candidates in my district running for the State senate and a commensurate number of house of delegates members, a tremendous 

ballot. But they stayed there in line and waited. 

39

By the way, Mr. Chairman, I think that—when I heard in some 

polling places in America people were in line and 8 o’clock or 7 

o’clock came and they were told they could not vote, I think that 

is illegal, and it ought to be illegal. If you are in line——

Mr. LEWIS. I did a poll on this one, too, of the States, because 

I wanted to find out if there was any State in the Union that had 

a rule or a law that says, if you are in line at poll closing time that 

you can’t vote. No State sent in that they had such a rule. 

Mr. HOYER. You heard the stories that I heard about people 

being told, it is 8 o’clock, polls are closed, you have to go home. 

Mr. LEWIS. Here is what I think most of them were, were people 

who tried to join the line after the poll closing time, which cannot 

be done. 

Mr. HOYER. I agree with that. The polls close at 8 o’clock, and 

if you are in the line, it is like the checkout line: The last cart can 

go through, but after that no more carts in the line. 

In any event, I appreciate the testimony. I hope, Mr. Chairman, 

that one of the things we do, maybe not in legislation, but we try 

to get together with the colleges and universities and make this a 

national program. 

We talk about a lot of the programs that President Clinton had, 

President Bush had in terms of voluntary participation. This would 

be a tremendous educational effort that would provide a tremendous service to the country as well. 

Thank you for your testimony. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Davis had to leave, but he wanted this letter included in the 

record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

Talking about the community effort, there was talk here, at one 

time, I understand, before I got in the Congress, about the fact that 

you could vote from maybe your home or something, but you need 

to be here to come together again. 

I remember that long line. In 1966, I was in third grade, and I 

was with my father standing in line, and it was a long line, voting 

for—— 

Mr. HOYER. We went a long time before we had a vicious attack. 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Chairman, in deference to the ranking member, you look older than that. 

The CHAIRMAN. I have said many times—— 

Mr. HOYER. God bless you, Mr. Reynolds. 

The CHAIRMAN. I have said many times at public events that Mr. 

Hoyer has held up a lot better than me. Actually, I was in the seventh grade. 

If there is no further business—— 

Ms. JACKSON. Mr. Chairman? 

The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Jackson. 

Ms. JACKSON. I would hope, because this has been so beneficial, 

that if you continue to have these hearings and come up with a 

committee that could include some local people, I think it would be 

very beneficial to the process. 

Mr. HOYER. Ms. Jackson—if I might, Mr. Chairman—you heard 

me talking to Mr. Lewis. 

40

In our legislation that I put in, that—by the way, I want you to 

know, before I put the legislation in, I sat down with the Chairman 

in his office, and we went over it. At that point in time, under his 

leadership, we were negotiating with a bipartisan group; and unfortunately that did not work, so we discussed this. 

We want to make sure that we have, in whatever commission or 

group that we have at the Federal level, that we have included on 

that—we have you included on it. We have the two members appointed by the National Association of County Recorders, Election 

Administrators, and Clerks already in the legislation, because we 

understand—I understand, and I think everybody on this committee understands, this is not our responsibility or expertise, administering elections, it is yours. 

On the other hand, Mr. Lewis makes a very powerful point, with 

which all of you obviously agree, and which Florida and the 37 

days that we were mesmerized by what was going to happen in 

Florida, pointed out very clearly that what you do affects everybody 

in the Nation and all of us who have a Federal responsibility under 

the Constitution for Federal elections. 

But we know that whatever we set up darned well better have 

your input on a regular, ongoing, legislated basis or we are not 

going to do it as well as we could. 

So I appreciate your observation. I want you to know we are 

going to do that. 

The CHAIRMAN. I ask unanimous consent that witnesses be allowed to submit their statements for the record and for those statements to be entered into the appropriate place in the record. 

Without objection, the material will be so entered. 

I ask unanimous consent that staff be authorized to make technical and conforming changes on all matters considered by the committee in today’s hearing. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

Having completed our business for the day and for this hearing 

on election reform, the committee is adjourned. 

Thank you for your participation. 

[Whereupon, at 7:10 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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